Biography

William E. Schuemann
Architectural Photographer

William E. "Bill" Schuemann was born in Cleveland in 1943 and spent his childhood in Shaker Heights where he attended Hawken School. After graduation, in 1958, Bill went to Culver Military Academy where he was a member of the Culver Rifles Honor Guard. Graduating in 1962 he then attended Arizona State, pledging into Alpha Delta Sigma Advertising Fraternity in his senior year. During the four years at Arizona State, he drove some 140,000 miles photographing most of the national parks and monuments in all of the Western states. This endeavor consumed weekends and breaks. During the summers he returned to Cleveland to work in sales at The Dodd Company on Huron Road. After graduation in 1966 with a BS in General Business, Bill turned down opportunities to work for Boeing in Washington State and Security First National in Los Angeles in preference to working with his father at the Schuemann-Jones Company, suppliers of fine medical and surgical supplies and equipment since 1902.

Not long after graduation the draft board became very interested in Bill and shortly after, The Cleveland Board of Education became his home while he worked as a substitute teacher. He pursued a BS in Education at Cleveland State and gained full-time employment at Saint Rita's Catholic School where he taught 6th grade for two years.

About the time 1970 rolled around, The Schuemann-Jones Company was sold to Healthcare Corp. of Boston. Bill was offered a five-year contract as Vice President-Credit Manager. Handling number-crunching proved to be more than a full-time job, free of any and all creativity. The love affair with photography that had always interested Bill had begun to interest him more and more.

In 1976, corporate life with new owners changed the way he liked to do business. Shortly thereafter, Bill changed jobs and obtained an outside sales position at Irvin and Company in Shaker Heights in the field of contract design sales and photography. Although it proved to be successful dollar-wise, the company regretfully folded in 1978 and was dissolved.

This strange turn of events provided the opportunity for Bill to become self-employed. Entering the difficult and tedious field of architectural photography proved rewarding and provided plenty of time for creativity on the job. He even ended up having a job at the Mauna Lani Bay Hotel at their grand opening in Hawaii.

Recent commissions have included television station interior, exterior, and low altitude helicopter photography. Cleveland Hopkins Airport and its 3,800 car parking garage expansion was a big project as well as the new RTA rail stations and the new high- design, AIA award-winning HeadStart pre-school project.

Cleveland healthcare projects have included buildings at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, University Hospitals, and Metro-Health Medical Center. Specialty "magic-hour" dusk shots of the new Browns' Stadium were a big success, along with the Indian's Jacobs' Field, Gund Arena, the new FBI Building, and the famous $500 million Tower City Centre renovation project and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Restoration of the historic New Akron Civic atmospheric theater, conversions of warehouses into lofts and condominiums have been popular projects as well. Appearing on the MBNA credit card and the cover of Ameritech telephone book was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, designed by architect IM Pei of New York City. These and countless other high-profile projects were completed using large-format 4" x 5" architectural photography. Commissions have taken Bill as far away as the exotic and tropical Seychelles Islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Besides photography, Bill is a member of The First Baptist Church of Greater Cleveland where he served as a Deacon on the Ministry Commission, has been a member of the Cleveland Rotary Club since 1970, and since 1994 has been an active member of The Cleveland Engineering Society. His hobbies include photography, collecting antique Buick automobiles, and collecting antique safes. Bill has been married to Nancy, a writer, for fifteen years and they have a loving black Labrador Retriever named Ebony.